A tournament is a competition run by an organizer, involving a number of players and fans, all participating in a sport or a game and involves a number of matches organized into brackets and pools. The base unit of a bracket has two players and the winner of a bracket advances to compete with an opponent. For a large number of players, the organizer may wish to divide the number of players into groups, also known as, pools. In some situations, a number of players form a team to compete against another team. Further, there are 4 types of bracket-style tournament, single elimination, double elimination, round robin, and Swiss. Hence, managing tournaments is an essential feature and usually implements a Tournament Management System (TMS).
Tournaments, events, and seasons form a hierarchical competition structure that is used for organizing multiple tournaments across time and space. A tournament is a standard sized competition consisting of pools and brackets. An event is a larger sized competition consisting of one or more tournaments. A season is the largest sized competition consisting of one or more tournaments as well as one or more events. A stakeholder in a tournament can be a tournament organizer, a single player, a team of players, or a fan. A user of an application for this integrated system can play one or more roles of stakeholders.
As tournament organizers organize a tournament, many utilize software tools to keep track of players participating in their tournament, determine player seeding, and record competition results. In addition, tournament organizers can wish to use a software tool to keep track of tournament finances such as fees and expenses, and to use social media to market and promote their tournaments.
While all of the resources a tournament organizer may need to effectively organize and market a tournament may be available, the resources may not be centralized or easily accessed from any location by any means. For example, some resources may not be available across different software platforms and electronic devices.
As tournament players, teams, or fans, many can wish to have a record of which tournament they and others have appeared in and to share their experience with others via social media. In addition, they can wish to use a software tool to keep track of these records. Also, they can wish to use a software tool to be given real-time notification or live information about when they and others are appearing in a match. Further, players and teams can wish to use a software tool to respond to this real-time notification, informing the tournament organizer of their availability to participate in their match.
Today, TMS has been refined with technology. Existing applications using the technologies are deficient in providing a well-integrated and fully-automated combination of software and hardware functions for data management and communication to effectively provide and receive live tournament services to satisfy all stakeholder or user needs in both online and offline modes. Further, today's applications are platform specific. Another major drawback of today's applications is denying crucial online based services when the user is in an offline mode. Those crucial yet unavailable online services include creating new tournaments, adding players, marking winners and losers in each pool and bracket.
In light of the above limitations, there appears to be a need for automating and integrating tournament logistics and services available to desktop, web and electronic devices.